Mystery Mercenary Group Is Blackwater’s 34th Front Company
October 4th, 2010Update: Ackerman Screwed Up on the House
The link below now states:
If International Development Solutions, a mysterious firm partially owned by Blackwater, has its own independent office, it’s hard to find. A business records search co-locates one of the jackpot winners of a State Department contract worth up to $10 million with Kaseman LLC, the well-connected private security security firm that partnered with Blackwater arm U.S. Training Center to win the contract.
That would suggest International Development Solutions — a company few industry experts have heard of, sporting a generic, Google-resistant name — is yet another front group the company set up to win government contracts while concealing its tainted brand. More of a mystery is why the State Department let the company get away with it. Again.
An earlier version of this story reported on the results of a different business records search that turned up a listing for the company in a residential neighborhood of Washington DC. But since it’s more likely that the firm be headquarted in Virginia with Kaseman — who didn’t return phone calls for this story, like Blackwater — I’m removing information on that house, along with an image of it, and hereby issue a full and frank apology to its owner; IDS; Kaseman; Blackwater/U.S. Training Center; and you, the reader; and a shout-out goes to Scrarcher in comments for calling me out on this.
—End Update—
Via: Wired:
This tasteful, quaint red-brick house on a tree-lined street in northwest Washington doesn’t appear to be the headquarters for a private security company that stands to make millions in a war zone. But the online trail for a mysterious firm, partially owned by Blackwater, leads here. And that company not only just won part of security contract with the State Department worth up to $10 billion last week. It’s also the latest in a series of cutouts used by the notorious mercenary firm to hide its work from public scrutiny. The business that’s listed at this house? Blackwater’s 34th front company, if you’re counting.
Check the URL again. Underlying story radically updated vis a vis location and apology given for citing what seems was a private citizen’s home in the Tenleytown neighborhood of DC.
Not that any of this alters the underlying fact that Xe/Blackwater is still receiving both Hope
and significant Change (10Billion?) from Hillary
and ‘Bama.